Scheduling algorithms for multicast traffic in TDM/WDM networks with arbitrary tuning latencies

We consider all-optical TDM/WDM broadcast and select networks with slotted operation. Each network access node is equipped with one fixed transmitter and one tunable receiver; tuning times are not negligible with respect to the fixed size slot time. We discuss efficient scheduling algorithms to assign TDM/WDM slots to multicast traffic in such networks. The problem is shown to be NP-hard; thus, heuristic algorithms based on the Tabu Search meta-heuristic are proposed, and their performance are assessed using randomly created request matrices based on two types of multicast traffic patterns. We show that significant advantages can be obtained by using these novel algorithms with respect to simpler greedy algorithms, even when restricting CPU times to realistic values to make the algorithms of practical use.